WASHINGTON —
Several Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have jointly proposed legislation aimed at completely stopping the issuance of student visas to Chinese citizens. The bill proposers said they are concerned that the Chinese government may use international students to steal U.S. intellectual property and threaten national security.
Republican Congressman Riley Moore from West Virginia introduced the “Stop Chinese Communist Prying by Vindicating Intellectual Safeguards in Academia Act” on Friday (March 14). The bill’s English abbreviation is “STOP CCP VISAs Act.”
The two-page bill seeks to prohibit the issuance of student visas for research or study purposes and other non-immigrant status to foreign nationals of the People’s Republic of China, including F, J or M visas.
“Each year we allow nearly 300,000 Chinese citizens to enter the United States on student visas. We are essentially inviting the Chinese Communist Party to steal our military secrets, intellectual property, and threaten our national security,” Congressman Moore said in a statement.
According to the annual report of the Institute of International Education, there are about 277,000 Chinese students studying in American universities in the 2023-2024 academic year, accounting for a quarter of the total number of international students. However, the number of Chinese students in the United States has been on a downward trend in recent years. Last year, India replaced China as the largest source country of international students in the United States.
Moore has been raising alarms in recent weeks about what he sees as the Chinese government’s potential use of U.S. student visas for other activities. Last month, he wrote a letter to Newsweek magazine, publicly calling for attention for the first time to the potential abuse of the U.S. student visa program by the Chinese Communist Party.
“Just last year, the FBI charged five Chinese students here on student visas after they were caught taking photos of a joint live-fire military exercise between the United States and Taiwan,” he said in a statement. “This cannot continue.”
Federal authorities in October charged five Chinese nationals, who were students at the University of Michigan, with lying and trying to cover their tracks about a nighttime visit to a remote Michigan military base where thousands of troops gathered for summer exercises.
According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court, the incident took place in the summer of 2023, and they are accused of misleading investigators about their actions and conspiring to erase photos from their phones.
The FBI said the five men all graduated from the University of Michigan in the spring of 2024. They participated in a joint program between the university and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. The document did not reveal the current whereabouts of the five.
Congressman Moore said Congress must take action to address “China’s abuse of our student visa program.”
“It’s time to turn off the valve and immediately ban all student visas to Chinese citizens,” Moore said.
The bill has been co-sponsored by five other Republicans, including Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Rep. Addison McDowell of North Carolina.
“The Chinese Communist Party is fundamentally antithetical to our American values, yet we have issued hundreds of thousands of student visas to Chinese nationals, many of whom are actually state-sponsored spies,” Rep. Gill said in the statement.
“It is completely unconscionable and threatening that we allow 300,000 Chinese citizens into American academic institutions while the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to undermine our national security,” said Congressman Perry.
The bill immediately sparked a backlash from Asian American organizations. Asian Americans Advancing Justice, an Asian American rights organization, issued a statement after the bill was introduced, saying, “We strongly oppose the practice of portraying all Chinese students as a threat, and warn everyone not to make racial profiling based on region rather than facts.”
The bill, pushed by Republicans in the House of Representatives, faces an uncertain future after its introduction. Any bill must be passed by both the House and the Senate in a consistent version before it can be sent to the president for signature.